And there it was. The start of her confession.
Rowan took the lead when he saw I was suddenly without words. “He doesn’t have to know. The reports are not public.”
Back and forth they discussed what would happen with the story until she was finally convinced she should tell it. Then she did.
“It was after he came into the stall. Like I said, he locked the door, and I whispered to him, ‘No—leave it open so he doesn’t know we’re here.’ I don’t think he really saw me until then. I was sitting on my heels on the narrow bench, trying to be as small as I could make myself with the baby.
“He looked at me with surprise or fear, like he didn’t know what to do. But then he locked the door anyway. He said something about the shooter knowing we were in here and that I should stay quiet.”
She looked at her folded hands again and thought about this last part. Then she drew a breath as though bracing herself for the discomfort of her own words.
“What he actually said was ‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll kill your baby.’”
Sometimes I think Rowan is made of steel because he didn’t flinch. I don’t know what I did, but it was more than that. A gasp, maybe. A look of shock, wide eyes. It was immediately apparent that Vera Pratt had never spoken words like this before.
She continued, “He grabbed me by my wrist and pulled me down from the bench. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know if he was the shooter, maybe, trying to pretend he wasn’t. I saw a movie once where a bank robber did that—took off his mask and hid among the hostages when he knew he couldn’t get out. I thought maybe he was a killer. I started to feel the cramps then and the baby kicking. I couldn’t catch my breath, which means he wasn’t getting enough oxygen, and then I feared I was going to suffocate him, my son, and I told the man, ‘Please—just let me go. The baby...’”
But Wade didn’t let her go. He held her in front of him and stood with his back to the wall. He crossed his arms around her chest so she couldn’t move away. He used her as a human shield.
I felt myself steel then. The alternative was to fall apart, right there in front of our witness.
Now I knew what he meant when he asked, “What have they said about me?” and then, “You think I’m a coward.” This is why he turned on me so suddenly. He was afraid I was playing him, luring him in. That I knew what he’d done to this woman and was trying to get him to confess or maybe arrest him. I can only imagine what twisted web he’d been weaving in his depraved mind. That if I never found out what he’d done, I would feel an attachment to him that went beyond that moment on the back road.
Rowan wrote everything down, asked more questions. The rest was the same. They heard Rowan call out, and Wade let her go, opened the door, and left when Rowan started tending to Vera.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Rowan told her.
I said the same, though my mind was on the implications of this story.
“If my husband knew,” she said, “he wouldn’t rest until he found this man and killed him. Please—this is his son, his wife.”
Rowan told her he understood. He assured her the statement would be kept in the file, confidential, even though we both knew he couldn’t promise that. We would try, both of us, but lying to witnesses had become second nature. Rowan went through the usual list offollow-upinquiries. These had already been covered in the first interview, and we got nothing new from it.
I asked her one last question before we helped her up and walked her to the elevator. It wasself-serving. Still, I couldn’t stop myself. “Did you hear the last shot?”
“Yes... I think so.”
“Do you remember if it came before or after the man came into the stall?”
Rowan’s eyes shifted from Vera Pratt to me and back again. The only good thing that had come from following that blue truck was hearing that Wade had been in the line of fire when I killed Clay Lucas. That I had taken a life to save a life. That Clay Lucas had fired at Wade, right at him, not off to the side. Which meant that he was there to take lives and not have someone take his. Even if Wade’s actions that followed called all of it into question, it had remained a possibility.
But now...
“I don’t remember,” Vera said. “But if he knew we were all safe, why was he still so afraid?”
Exactly. If he’d seen Clay fall the way he told me and then gone into that dressing room to help Vera Pratt, why would he lock the door and use her as a human shield? Vera and her unborn child? Why would he pin himself against the wall, shaking with fear?
The clock turns again. It’s 4:37.
I grab my phone and check the news feed. There’s nothing since last night when the composite went out. It only reached the local outlets, but that was enough. We assume he is still in the area. They included his height and the description of the truck. They said he was a material witness to the shooting at Nichols Depot. I stare at the composite. It looks inhuman, thiscomputer-generatedimage. Still, I stare at it for a long while. His face. Wade. The 404.
I’m back to where I was before I followed him out of town. Back to not knowing if I needed to kill Clay Lucas. But there’s no time to indulge in anguish orself-loathing. I have a bigger problem now, and all I can feel is rage.
It’s 4:57 when I hear a buzzing sound. I’m holding my phone, so I know that’s not the source. But it is some kind of phone or device. I think through the possibilities. The alarm system Mitch installed last night, which chimes anytime a door or window opens. Does it do more than that? I go to the box in the front hall. I hear the buzz again. It is louder, but not coming from the alarm system. I think next about the smoke detectors. Maybe one is low on batteries. Only those chirp, and they chirp loudly and a minute apart. This is a buzz, and it’s coming every few seconds.
I follow the sound into the dining room, of all places. I scan the room and see nothing, but I’m drawn to the small chest in the corner where we keep the nice linen and silver that we only use on special occasions. I open the top drawer and stop, frozen.
On top of a stack of neatly folded napkins is a phone, and I think, pray, that maybe it’s Amy’s. Maybe she found a way to get one after we told her she was still too young. But where would she get a phone? How would she pay for it? She’s only nine. And why would she leave it here? These thoughts lag behind what I already know but don’t want to know. What I don’t want to be real.
